In which ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Question 1

My media products conform to typical conventions of the real life counterparts in many ways as I made sure that before I started the production on them that I knew the common elements which would appear on other products and therefore would be able to use some of those ideas in the development of my own. By doing this it helps to reinforce the conventions associated with the product and make it easier for audiences engage with them as they will already be familiar with the features used.

For the documentary I made sure to research existing documentaries and note down the conventions so it would help me with the production of my own, I watched “English Hearts”, “Chasing Ice” and “Rock and Roll Exposed” as well as some others and noticed some elements, which appeared in all of them. We created a mixed documentary which featured voiceover elements as well as interviews, reconstructions and archive footage, we chose this type of documentary as it is one of the most widely seen documentary type and channel 4, which we hope to air our documentary on, shows many mixed documentaries in their regular programming.

Print Ad Channel 4 logo on the right hand side of the advert, indicates the channel which the documentary is on.

Highlighted text backed by a solid colour, the colours used contrast well and are used on all of the elements in the advert.

Usually there is a main subject image behind the text of the advert, this dominates the advert and gives an indication to what the advert is about from a glance. Only basic editing was used on the image to keep it natural and life like.

The tagline of the documentary appears in the top left as well as the name and time in which it is being shown on. These typically are left aligned and in the top and bottom thirds of the advert.

The use of name cards for interviewees in the documentary is a convention which is used to introduce the person who is speaking. This is very common and will usually display the first time the person is talking. The style of the name card is in the house style of the documentary and is very similar to the title card. Their occupation is displayed under their name too so the audience know if the person speaking is in a profession, this also helps make the documentary look more professional overall.

Name Titles

The use of a voiceover is used to help the exposition become apparent within the documentary, by doing this the voiceover provides facts, statistics and other information about the topic. In my documentary we chose someone who had a professional and clear speaking voice, this was to make what was being said more believable and so it wound stand out against any sound from the clips and also the music bed. The narrator is a key part in a mixed documentary as they help link certain parts of the documentary together between interviews and vox-pop segments.

Voiceover

During the interviews we have ensured to make the mise en scene appropriate for the topic of the documentary (Breakfast), so the backgrounds of the interviews are of relevance to the subject. An example would be in the picture above, you can see the background is of a restaurant, this fits in with the subject and maintains a consistent theme running throughout the documentary. It also provides the continuity and flow which is needed for the audience to follow what the narrative.

Mise En Scene

A general rule of filmmaking is to place the subject offset into either the left or right regions of the frame if it were to be split into 3 equal sections. By doing this it allows the subject to look at the interviewer instead of at the camera. We wanted to flip some of the interviews so the users attention was maintained and kept it interesting to watch, some of the shots angles also change such as the one above is a mid-shot from a low angle.

Rule of Thirds